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TEAM PARKO ARE COOKING, BRU
I can hear the contest presentation now as I type, can almost see it if I lean out over the balcony of my little studio apartment here. Joel Parkinson is describing one of his perfect 10s, how it was all a blur, then popping out the end and wondering, “How did I get here?”
A few moments earlier, in the pre-fab contest hut beneath the judges’ tour, big Luke Egan had got a hold of a print out of the latest ratings already and couldn’t wipe the grin from his face. He looked at Joel with an expression that said, you’re going to want to see this. Joel strolled over, feet taped and bloody from a few too many scrapes from the J-Bay rocks and glanced at the sheet of paper. “What is it?” he asked, then saw the ratings and furrowed his brow in concentration, doing the maths.
“1400, huh?” he marvelled, tightenting his mouth into a look of mock astonishment. Confronted with this mighty mid-season ratings lead, he might well have been pondering that same question: “How did I get here?”
For a moment it was quiet in the little hut, as the crowd and commentator burbled outside. But inside, you could see, Joel and Louie were laughing.
Big strapping Wes Berg, the Australian ironman turned pro surf trainer, wasn’t going to let the boys get too carried away. “Tomorrow he’s no one again. We’re training, no day off,” he barked.
Occy, clutching his framed print for winning the second Icons heat with Curren, looked genuinely astonished, as if this was the most outrageous thing he’d ever heard. “I can’t tell if you guys are serious or not,” he moaned.
Together, these four contrasting characters have helped mastermind Parko’s comprehensive domination of this year’s tour. It’s no mathematical certainty, but earlier in the day Mick Fanning had observed, “The world title could be decided today,” and it might very well have been.
Parko’s command at J-Bay was absolute, the only likely challenges coming from two very different characters - the local powerhouse Sean Holmes, who began to falter as the swell dropped today, and the wild whizkid Dane Reynolds, who’s improvisational approach to the long J-Bay walls was the perfect counterpoint to Joel’s impeccable, almost choreographed technique. In the end, impeccable technique won the day, but not before Dane had served notice that when he gets his contest head screwed on right, he could yet do some damage in the upper reaches of the ‘CT. Only Damien Hobgood’s razor-sharp backhand and a dwindling swell denied Dane a berth in the final - and a matchup that almost everyone had hoped for.
Today was smaller than yesterday and dropping fast through the semi-finals, as Joel snuck past a red-hot Kai Otton in a good-old-fashioned tube-riding duel (and with perhaps the gentlest nudge from the judges), and Damien Hobgood pipped Dane by a cruel .07 of a point.
It could have been anti-climatic after yesterday’s dramatics, but today’ s story was all about Joel and how he’s mustered a decade’s worth of unrealised potential and moulded it into an irresistible force, with a little help from his friends. Joel, Luke, Occ and Wes have shared a house here for a fortnight, and in that time have eaten out only three times.
“We just try and create our own little team. It’s good because we all get along so well,” says Wes.
“The house is pure. It’s a good house. We’ve already booked it for next year,” reckoned Occ.
Joel has been cooking here, bru, literally and figuratively. “He’s been surfing all day and just coming home and cooking the best dinners,:” says Luke. “He loves it. I say, can I help? And he just waves me away.”
Louie is now doing the rest of the tour with his young buddy, after Joel handled the delicate negotiations for a leave pass from Luke’s TV star wife, Natalie Gruzlewski. “We worked that out after Bells. We thought, if it’s working we’ll keep going. When he won the first two we went, well, it’s working. He went and saw my wife first and asked, can he come?” grins Luke.
Poor Nat would have had to answer to a nation of rabid surf fans hungry for another home-grown world champ if she’d said no.
With Slater’s third round loss to old buddy Taylor Knox, and the early eliminations of Mick, Taj, CJ and Adriano, the odds on a Parkinson title are shortening all the time. Joel won this event a decade ago as a wildcard, and a world title seemed only a matter of time. That time may very well be now.